EQUALITY

Equality

"Equality" is reprinted from The Spectator, vol. CLXXI (27 August 1943), p. 192

I am a democrat (1) because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. Whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people — all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

This introduces a view of equality rather different from that in which we have been trained. I do not think that equality is one of those things (like wisdom or happiness) which are good simply in themselves and for their own sakes. I think it is in the same class as medicine, which is good because we are ill, or clothes which are good because we are no longer innocent. I don't think the old authority in kings, priests, husbands, or fathers, and the old obedience in subjects, laymen, wives, and sons, was in itself a degrading or evil thing at all. I think it was intrinsically as good and beautiful as the nakedness of Adam and Eve. It was rightly taken away because men became bad and abused it. To attempt to restore it now would be the same error as that of the Nudists. Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

But medicine is not good. There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values -- offers food to some need which we have starved.

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget, but as an ideal, we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. 

That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. 

The man who cannot conceive a joyful and loyal obedience on the one hand, nor an unembarrassed and noble acceptance of that obedience on the other - the man who has never even wanted to kneel or to bow - is a prosaic barbarian. 

But it would be wicked folly to restore these old inequalities on the legal or external plane. Their proper place is elsewhere.

We must wear clothes since the Fall. Yes, but inside, under what Milton called "these troublesome disguises" (2). We want the naked body, that is, the real body, to be alive. We want it, on proper occasions, to appear -- in the marriage-chamber, in the public privacy of a men's bathing-place, and (of course) when any medical or other emergency demands. In the same way, under the necessary outer covering of legal equality, the whole hierarchical dance and harmony of our deep and joyously accepted spiritual inequalities should be alive. It is there, of course, in our life as Christians -- there, as laymen, we can obey – all the more because the priest has no authority over us on the political level. It is there in our relation to parents and teachers – all the more because it is now a willed and wholly spiritual reverence. It should be there also in marriage.

This last point needs a little plain speaking. Men have so horribly abused their power over women in the past that to wives, of all people, equality is in danger of appearing as an ideal. 

But Mrs. Naomi Mitchison has laid her finger on the real point. 

Have as much equality as you please – the more the better – in our marriage laws, but at some level consent to inequality, nay, delight in inequality, is an erotic necessity. 

Mrs. Mitchison speaks of women so fostered on a defiant idea of equality that the mere sensation of the male embrace rouses an undercurrent of resentment. Marriages are thus shipwrecked (3). This is the tragi-comedy of the modem woman -- taught by Freud to consider the act of love the most important thing in life, and then inhibited by feminism from that internal surrender which alone can make it a complete emotional success. Merely for the sake of her own erotic pleasure, to go no further, some degree of obedience and humility seems to be (normally) necessary on the woman's part.

The error here has been to assimilate all forms of affection to that special form we call friendship. It indeed does imply equality. But it is quite different from the various loves within the same household. Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up – painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other -- that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

We Britons should rejoice that we have contrived to reach much legal democracy (we still need more of the economic) without losing our ceremonial Monarchy. For there, right in the midst of our lives, is that which satisfies the craving for inequality, and acts as a permanent reminder that medicine is not food. Hence a man's reaction to Monarchy is a kind of test. Monarchy can easily be "debunked", but watch the faces, mark well the accents of the debunkers. These are the men whose taproot in Eden has been cut -- whom no rumor of the polyphony, the dance, can reach – men to whom pebbles laid in a row are more beautiful than an arch. Yet even if they desire mere equality they cannot reach it. Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead -- even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served -- deny it food and it will gobble poison.

That is why this whole question is of practical importance. Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.

(1) C.S. Lewis lived and wrote in England. Hence, his reference to "being a Democrat" had nothing to do with our (USA) "Democratic Party". 

(2) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book IV, line 740. 18 

(3) Naomi Mitchison, The Home and a Changing Civilization (London, 1934), Chapter I, pp. 49-50.

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment by C.S. Lewis

The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment 

C.S. Lewis

In England we have lately had a controversy about Capital Punishment. I do not know whether a murderer is more likely to repent and make good on the gallows a few weeks after his trial or in the prison infirmary thirty years later. I do not know whether the fear of death is an indispensable deterrent. I need not, for the purpose of this article, decide whether it is a morally permissible deterrent. Those are questions which I propose to leave untouched. 

My subject is not Capital Punishment in particular, but that theory of punishment in general which the controversy showed to be called the Humanitarian theory. Those who hold it think that it is mild and merciful. In this I believe that they are seriously mistaken. I believe that the “Humanity” which it claims is a dangerous illusion and disguises the possibility of cruelty and injustice without end. I urge a return to the traditional or Retributive theory not solely, not even primarily, in the interests of society, but in the interests of the criminal.

According to the Humanitarian theory, to punish a man because he deserves it, and as much as he deserves, is mere revenge, and, therefore, barbarous and immoral. It is maintained that the only legitimate motives for punishing are the desire to deter others by example or to mend the criminal. When this theory is combined, as frequently happens, with the belief that all crime is more or less pathological, the idea of mending tails off into that of healing or curing and punishment becomes therapeutic. Thus it appears at first sight that we have passed from the harsh and self-righteous notion of giving the wicked their deserts to the charitable and enlightened one of tending the psychologically sick. What could be more amiable? One little point which is taken for granted in this theory needs, however, to be made explicit. The things done to the criminal, even if they are called cures, will be just as compulsory as they were in the old days when we called them punishments. If a tendency to steal can be cured by psychotherapy, the thief will no doubt be forced to undergo the treatment. Otherwise, society cannot continue.

My contention is that this doctrine, merciful though it appears, really means that each one of us, from the moment he breaks the law, is deprived of the rights of a human being.

The reason is this. The Humanitarian theory removes from Punishment the concept of Desert. But the concept of Desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. I do not here contend that the question ‘Is it deserved?’ is the only one we can reasonably ask about a punishment. We may very properly ask whether it is likely to deter others and to reform the criminal. But neither of these two last questions is a question about justice. 

There is no sense in talking about a ‘just deterrent’ or a ‘just cure’. 

We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a ‘case’.

The distinction will become clearer if we ask who will be qualified to determine sentences when sentences are no longer held to derive their propriety from the criminal’s deservings. On the old view the problem of fixing the right sentence was a moral problem. 

Accordingly, the judge who did it was a person trained in jurisprudence; trained, that is, in a science which deals with rights and duties, and which, in origin at least, was consciously accepting guidance from the Law of Nature, and from Scripture. We must admit that in the actual penal code of most countries at most times these high originals were so much modified by local custom, class interests, and utilitarian concessions, as to be very imperfectly recognizable. But the code was never in principle, and not always in fact, beyond the control of the conscience of the society. And when (say, in eighteenth-century England) actual punishments conflicted too violently with the moral sense of the community, juries refused to convict and reform was finally brought about. This was possible because, so long as we are thinking in terms of Desert, the propriety of the penal code, being a moral question, is a question n which every man has the right to an opinion, not because he follows this or that profession, but because he is simply a man, a rational animal enjoying the Natural Light. But all this is changed when we drop the concept of Desert. The only two questions we may now ask about a punishment are whether it deters and whether it cures. But these are not questions on which anyone is entitled to have an opinion simply because he is a man. He is not entitled to an opinion even if, in addition to being a man, he should happen also to be a jurist, a Christian, and a moral theologian. For they are not question about principle but about matter of fact; and for such cuiquam in sua arte credendum. Only the expert ‘penologist’ (let barbarous things have barbarous names), in the light of previous experiment, can tell us what is likely to deter: only the psychotherapist can tell us what is likely to cure. It will be in vain for the rest of us, speaking simply as men, to say, ‘but this punishment is hideously unjust, hideously disproportionate to the criminal’s deserts’. The experts with perfect logic will reply, ‘but nobody was talking about deserts. No one was talking about punishment in your archaic vindictive sense of the word. Here are the statistics proving that this treatment deters. Here are the statistics proving that this other treatment cures. What is your trouble?

The Humanitarian theory, then, removes sentences from the hands of jurists whom the public conscience is entitled to criticize and places them in the hands of technical experts whose special sciences do not even employ such categories as rights or justice. It might be argued that since this transference results from an abandonment of the old idea of punishment, and, therefore, of all vindictive motives, it will be safe to leave our criminals in such hands. I will not pause to comment on the simple-minded view of fallen human nature which such a belief implies. Let us rather remember that the ‘cure’ of criminals is to be compulsory; and let us then watch how the theory actually works in the mind or the Humanitarian. The immediate starting point of this article was a letter I read in one of our Leftist weeklies. The author was pleading that a certain sin, now treated by our laws as a crime, should henceforward be treated as a disease. And he complained that under the present system the offender, after a term in gaol, was simply let out to return to his original environment where he would probably relapse. What he complained of was not the shutting up but the letting out. On his remedial view of punishment the offender should, of course, be detained until he was cured. And or course the official straighteners are the only people who can say when that is. 

The first result of the Humanitarian theory is, therefore, to substitute for a definite sentence (reflecting to some extent the community’s moral judgment on the degree of ill-desert involved) an indefinite sentence terminable only by the word of those experts—and they are not experts in moral theology nor even in the Law of Nature—who inflict it. Which of us, if he stood in the dock, would not prefer to be tried by the old system?

It may be said that by the continued use of the word punishment and the use of the verb ‘inflict’ I am misrepresenting Humanitarians. They are not punishing, not inflicting, only healing. 

But do not let us be deceived by a name. To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of ‘normality’ hatched in a Vienese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success—who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? That it includes most of the elements for which any punishment is feared—shame, exile, bondage, and years eaten by the locust—is obvious. Only enormous ill-desert could justify it; but ill-desert is the very conception which the Humanitarian theory has thrown overboard.

If we turn from the curative to the deterrent justification of punishment we shall find the new theory even more alarming. When you punish a man in terrorem, make of him an ‘example’ to others, you are admittedly using him as a means to an end; someone else’s end. This, in itself, would be a very wicked thing to do. On the classical theory of Punishment it was of course justified on the ground that the man deserved it. That was assumed to be established before any question of ‘making him an example arose’ arose. You then, as the saying is, killed two birds with one stone; in the process of giving him what he deserved you set an example to others. But take away desert and the whole morality of the punishment disappears. Why, in Heaven’s name, am I to be sacrificed to the good of society in this way?—unless, of course, I deserve it.

But that is not the worst. If the justification of exemplary punishment is not to be based on dessert but solely on its efficacy as a deterrent, it is not absolutely necessary that the man we punish should even have committed the crime. The deterrent effect demands that the public should draw the moral, ‘If we do such an act we shall suffer like that man.’ The punishment of a man actually guilty whom the public think innocent will not have the desired effect; the punishment of a man actually innocent will, provided the public think him guilty. But every modern State has powers which make it easy to fake a trial. When a victim is urgently needed for exemplary purposes and a guilty victim cannot be found, all the purposes of deterrence will be equally served by the punishment (call it ‘cure’ if you prefer0 of an innocent victim, provided that the public can be cheated into thinking him will be so wicked. The punishment of an innocent, that is , an undeserving, man is wicked only if we grant the traditional view that righteous punishment means deserved punishment. Once we have abandoned that criterion, all punishments have to be justified, if at all, on other grounds that have nothing to do with desert. Where the punishment of the innocent can be justified on those grounds (and it could in some cases be justified as a deterrent) it will be no less moral than any other punishment. Any distaste for it on the part of the Humanitarian will be merely a hang-over from the Retributive theory.

It is, indeed, important to notice that my argument so far supposes no evil intentions on the part of the Humanitarian and considers only what is involved in the logic of his position. My contention is that good men (not bad men) consistently acting upon that position would act as cruelly and unjustly as the greatest tyrants. They might in some respects act even worse. Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. 

To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level with those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severely, because we have deserved it, because we ‘ought to have known better’, is to be treated as a human person made in God’s image.

In reality, however, we must face the possibility of bad rulers armed with a Humanitarian theory of punishment. A great many popular blue prints for a Christian society are merely what the Elizabethans called ‘eggs in moonshine’ because they assume that the whole society is Christian or that the Christians are in control. This is not so in most contemporary States. Even if it were, our rulers would still be fallen men, and, therefore neither ver wise nor very good. As it is, they will usually be unbelievers. And since wisdom and virtue are not the only or the commonest qualifications for a place in the government, they will not often be even the best unbelievers.

The practical problem of Christian politics is not that of drawing up schemes for a Christian society, but that of living as innocently as we can with unbelieving fellow-subjects under unbelieving rulers who will never be perfectly wise and good and who will sometimes be very wicked and very foolish. And when they are wicked the Humanitarian theory of punishment will put in their hands a finer instrument of tyranny than wickedness ever had before. For if crime and disease are to be regarded as the same thing, it follows that any state of mind which our masters choose to call ‘disease’ can be treated as a crime; and compulsorily cured. It will be vain to plead that states of mind which displease government need not always involve moral turpitude and do not therefore always deserve forfeiture of liberty. For our masters will not be using the concepts of Desert and Punishment but those of disease and cure. We know that one school of psychology already regards religion as a neurosis. When this particular neurosis becomes inconvenient to government, what is to hinder government from proceeding to ‘cure’ it? Such ‘cure’ will, of course, be compulsory; but under the Humanitarian theory it will not be called by the shocking name of Persecution. No one will blame us for being Christians, no one will hate us, no one will revile us. The new Nero will approach us with the silky manners of a doctor, and though all will be in fact as compulsory as the tunica molesta or Smithfield or Tyburn, all will go on within the unemotional therapeutic sphere where words like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ or ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’ are never heard. And thus when the command is given, every prominent Christian in the land may vanish overnight into Institutions for the Treatment of the Ideologically Unsound, and it will rest with the expert gaolers to say when (if ever) they are to re-emerge. But it will not be persecution. Even if the treatment is painful, even if it is life-long, even if it is fatal, that will be only a regrettable accident; the intention was purely therapeutic. In ordinary medicine there were painful operations and fatal operations; so in this. But because they are ‘treatment’, not punishment, they can be criticized only by fellow-experts and on technical grounds, never by men as men and on grounds of justice.

This is why I think it essential to oppose the Humanitarian theory of punishment, root and branch, wherever we encounter it. It carries on its front a semblance of mercy which is wholly false. That is how it can deceive men of good will. The error began, with Shelley’s statement that the distinction between mercy and justice was invented in the courts of tyrants. It sounds noble, and was indeed the error of a noble mind. But the distinction is essential. The older view was that mercy ‘tempered’ justice, or (on the highest level of all) that mercy and justice had met and kissed. The essential act of mercy was to pardon; and pardon in its very essence involves the recognition of guilt and ill-desert in the recipient. 

If crime is only a disease which needs cure, not sin which deserves punishment, it cannot be pardoned. 

How can you pardon a man for having a gumboil or a club foot? 

But the Humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish Justice and substitute Mercy for it. 

This means that you start being ‘kind’ to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no on but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. 

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. 

As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice; transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. 

But we ought long ago to have learned our lesson. We should be too old now to be deceived by those humane pretensions which have served to usher in every cruelty of the revolutionary period in which we live. These are the ‘precious balms’ which will ‘break our heads’.

There is a fine sentence in Bunyan: ‘It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his House, he would sell me for a Slave.’ There is a fine couplet, too, in John Ball:

‘Be war or ye be wo; Knoweth your frend from your foo.’

WALK THIS WAY

The Man in Black :

You are like a dog, fetching a stick over and over.

You tell The Kid what happened to the old crew?

You tell him that everyone that walks with you dies By My Hand?

Chief Taqa Walker :

It's been good walking with you, Madison Clark.

Maddison Clark :

You too, Taqa.

AXIS MUNDI — The Dark Tower

One last time around The Wheel,

Old Friend.

The Gunslinger:

This is madness.

The Kid :

You can't walk

into a hospital here carrying guns.

Trust me.

Come on.

Let me do all the talking.

Hi.

You've reached Laurie, Lon and Jake.

Please leave a detailed message...

and we'll get back to you

as soon as possible.

This is awful. 

Try it.

That looks gross. What is it?

You got to try it. 

It's terrible.

I don't want to try it if it's terrible.

It's like mango...

The Gunslinger:

Do the animals here still speak?

What? No, that's a commercial.

Wait, what do you mean by "still"..?

He's in here.

Mr. Deschain.

I see the antibiotics are kicking in.

On a scale of one to 10, how bad is your pain?

The Gunslinger:

Okay.

You were in very bad shape.

I'm surprised you're even sitting up.

The Gunslinger:

I'm Stronger Than Most.

We get that sentiment a lot.

So aside from your infection

and the wound from the...

costume-party incident...

we also found traces

of hepatitis a, b, e, and...

Chronic Radiation Sickness.

Have you traveled overseas

in the past couple of months?

The Gunslinger:

No. I've been here on Keystone-Earth.

So am I cured or not?

We're going to keep you here for the night to monitor your progress.

[Begins ripping I.V. Tubing feeds out of his arm by the fistful.]

Maybe tomorrow afternoon...

What are you doing? No.

The Gunslinger:

I can't stay Here.

You need to get back on that.

Mr. Deschain, you need...

The Gunslinger:

[Deposits Gold into The Healer’s palm.]

For your services.

Wait, what?

May Your Days Be Long.

But you need to get back on that.

Mr. Deschain?

Bring my guns.

These are painkillers and vitamins.

You only want to take

one or two at a... time.

Hey, cutie.

Can we join The Party?

The Gunslinger:

You have both forgotten

The Faces of Your Fathers.

You probably shouldn't talk

to people Here.

What is this?

Sugar.

How we gonna find the portal?

New York's a pretty big place.

I don't know.

I just can't let Walter know

how I'm coming for him.

I've got an idea.

These painkillers work fast.

I haven't felt this good in years.

Yeah, we got the good stuff.

Got any more of that sugar?

A TAXONOMY OF THE SACRED

• “Any material image of a religious idea is an IDOL;”

"It's a Radio for Talking to God -- "
and Then, at The End, The Wrath of God will come out and
MELT YOUR FACE

• “A material object in which force is supposed to be concentrated is a FETISH;”

Its power has no equal -- as a Weapon, to Destroy, or as a Tool, to Build.

• “A material object, or a class of material objects, plants, or animals, which is regarded by man with superstitious respect, and between whom and man there is supposed to exist an invisible but effective force, is a TOTEM.”

J. Fitzgerald Lee, 

"The Greater Exodus," 

London, 1903

All Humour is a POWER STRUGGLE

Donkey! 

Hey, Tom.

Where's your sexier half? 

She had to work.

On a Saturday? 

Careful, Donkey, you sure she isn't getting a leg over?!

[ Of course, it later turns out that this is precisely what she is doing at this point.... ] 

This is Andy, Errol's Uncle.

Oh, Errol? My condolences.

Joking! Good to meet you, Andy.

I'm Tom, Alfie's Dad.

Andy is a musician.

Oh, yeah? Andy the musician.

I've heard of you.

Really? Yeah, aren't you in that band? What is it? 

No Direction! 

Come on, that was a good one, Donkey. I'm only joking.

What kind of music do you play? 

Well, it's, sort of, a combination of  —

Hold that thought.

I need to spend a penny.

Here you go.

And don't drink any, I've got my eye on you, Donkey.

Why does that prick keep calling you Donkey? 

Is it because of your, erm 

No. He thinks I look like the donkey from Shrek.

Does he mean Eddie Murphy or the actual donkey? 

I don't know.

I never asked.

I mean you're not just going to let him get away with calling you that are you? 

It's fine.

It's just a nickname

I have been Denounced by Jeremy Corbyn over a Joke

FROM POWER STRUGGLE TO REVENGE 

YOUTH: 

Okay, all this talk about teleology and such is pure sophistry, and trauma definitely does exist. And people cannot break free from the past. 

Surely you realise that? We cannot go back to the past in a time machine. As long as the past exists as the past, we live within contexts from the past. 

If one were to treat the past as something that does not exist, that would be the same as negating the entire life one has led. Are you suggesting I choose such an irresponsible life? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

It is true that one cannot use a time machine or turn back the hands of time. But what kind of meaning does one attribute to past events? This is the task that is given to ‘you now’. 

YOUTH: 

All right, so let’s talk about ‘now’. Last time, you said that people fabricate the emotion of anger, right? And that that is the standpoint of teleology. I still cannot accept that statement. For example, how would you explain instances of anger toward society, or anger toward government? Would you say that these, too, are emotions fabricated in order to push one’s opinions? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Certainly, there are times when I feel indignation with regard to social problems. But I would say that rather than a sudden burst of emotion, it is indignation based on logic. There is a difference between personal anger (personal grudge) and indignation with regard to society’s contradictions and injustices (righteous indignation). Personal anger soon cools. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, lasts for a long time. Anger as an expression of a personal grudge is nothing but a tool for making others submit to you. 

YOUTH: You say that personal grudges and righteous indignation are different? 

PHILOSOPHER: They are completely different. Because righteous indignation goes beyond one’s own interests. 

YOUTH: Then, I’ll ask about personal grudges. Surely even you get angry sometimes—for instance, if someone hurls abuse at you for no particular reason—don’t you? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

No, I do not. 

YOUTH: Come on, be honest. 

PHILOSOPHER: If someone were to abuse me to my face, I would think about the person’s hidden goal. Even if you are not directly abusive, when you feel genuinely angry due to another person’s words or behaviour, please consider that the person is challenging you to a power struggle. 

YOUTH: A power struggle? 

PHILOSOPHER: For instance, a child will tease an adult with various pranks and misbehaviours. 

In many cases, this is something done with the goal of getting attention, and will cease just before the adult gets genuinely angry. 

However, if the child does not stop before the adult gets genuinely angry, then his goal is actually to get in a fight. 

YOUTH: 

Why would he want to get in a fight? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

He wants to win. He wants to prove his power by winning. 

YOUTH: I don’t really get that. Could you give me some concrete examples? 

PHILOSOPHER: 

Let’s say you and a friend have been discussing the current political situation. 

Before long, it turns into a heated argument, and neither of you is willing to accept any differences of opinion until finally it reaches the point where he starts engaging in personal attacks—that you’re stupid, and it’s because of people like you that this country doesn’t change; that sort of thing. 

YOUTH: 

But if someone said that to me, 

I wouldn’t be able to put up with it. 

PHILOSOPHER: 

In this case, what is the other person’s goal? 

Is it only that he wants to discuss politics? 

No, it isn’t. It’s that he finds you unbearable, and he wants to criticise and provoke you, and make you submit through a power struggle. If you get angry at this point, the moment he has been anticipating will arrive, and the relationship will suddenly turn into a power struggle. No matter what the provocation, you must not get taken in. 

YOUTH: No, there’s no need to run away from it. If someone wants to start a fight, it’s fine to accept it. Because it’s the other guy who’s at fault, anyway. You can bash his nose in, the stupid fool. With words, that is. PHILOSOPHER: Now, let’s say you take control of the quarrel. And then the other man, who was seeking to defeat you, withdraws in a sportsmanlike manner. The thing is, the power struggle doesn’t end there. Having lost the dispute, he rushes onto the next stage. YOUTH: The next stage? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It’s the revenge stage. Though he has withdrawn for the time being, he will be scheming some revenge in another place and another form, and will reappear with an act of retaliation. YOUTH: Like what, for instance? PHILOSOPHER: The child oppressed by his parents will turn to delinquency. He’ll stop going to school. He’ll cut his wrists or engage in other acts of self-harm. In Freudian aetiology, this is regarded as simple cause and effect: the parents raised the child in this way, and that is why the child grew up to be like this. It’s just like pointing out that a plant wasn’t watered, so it withered. It’s an interpretation that is certainly easy to understand. But Adlerian teleology does not turn a blind eye to the goal that the child is hiding. That is to say, the goal of revenge on the parents. If he becomes a delinquent, stops going to school, cuts his wrists or things like that, the parents will be upset. They’ll panic and worry themselves sick over him. It is in the knowledge that this will happen that the child engages in problem behaviour. So that the current goal (revenge on the parents) can be realised, not because he is motivated by past causes (home environment). YOUTH: He engages in problem behaviour in order to upset his parents? PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. There are probably a lot of people who feel mystified by seeing a child who cuts his wrists, and think, Why would he do such a thing? But try to think how the people around the child—the parents, for instance—will feel as a result of the behaviour of wrist-cutting. If you do, the goal behind the behaviour should come into view of its own accord. YOUTH: The goal being revenge? PHILOSOPHER: Yes. And once the interpersonal relationship reaches the revenge stage, it is almost impossible for either party to find a solution. To prevent this from happening, when one is challenged to a power struggle, one must never allow oneself to be taken in. 

ADMITTING FAULT IS NOT DEFEAT 

YOUTH: All right, then what should you do when you’re subjected to personal attacks right to your face? Do you just grin and bear it? PHILOSOPHER: No, the idea that you are ‘bearing it’ is proof that you are still stuck in the power struggle. When you are challenged to a fight, and you sense that it is a power struggle, step down from the conflict as soon as possible. Do not answer his action with a reaction. That is the only thing we can do. YOUTH: But is it really that easy to not respond to provocation? In the first place, how would you say I should control my anger? PHILOSOPHER: When you control your anger, you’re ‘bearing it’, right? Instead, let’s learn a way to settle things without using the emotion of anger. Because after all, anger is a tool. A means for achieving a goal. YOUTH: That’s a tough one. PHILOSOPHER: The first thing that I want you to understand here is the fact that anger is a form of communication, and that communication is nevertheless possible without using anger. We can convey our thoughts and intentions and be accepted without any need for anger. If you learn to understand this experientially, the anger emotion will stop appearing, all on its own. YOUTH: But what if they come at you with mistaken accusations, or make insulting comments? I shouldn’t get angry even then? PHILOSOPHER: You don’t seem to understand yet. It’s not that you mustn’t get angry, but that there is no need to rely on the tool of anger. Irascible people do not have short tempers—it is only that they do not know that there are effective communication tools other than anger. That is why people end up saying things like ‘I just snapped’ or ‘he flew into a rage’. We end up relying on anger to communicate. YOUTH: Effective communication tools other than anger … PHILOSOPHER: We have language. We can communicate through language. Believe in the power of language, and the language of logic. YOUTH: Certainly, if I did not believe in that, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue. PHILOSOPHER: One more thing about power struggles. In every instance, no matter how much you might think you are right, try not to criticise the other party on that basis. This is an interpersonal relationship trap that many people fall into. YOUTH: Why’s that? PHILOSOPHER: The moment one is convinced that ‘I am right’ in an interpersonal relationship, one has already stepped into a power struggle. YOUTH: Just because you think you’re right? No way, that’s just blowing things all out of proportion. PHILOSOPHER: I am right. That is to say, the other party is wrong. At that point, the focus of the discussion shifts from ‘the rightness of the assertions’ to ‘the state of the interpersonal relationship’. In other words, the conviction that ‘I am right’ leads to the assumption that ‘this person is wrong’, and finally it becomes a contest and you are thinking, I have to win. It’s a power struggle through and through. YOUTH: Hmm. PHILOSOPHER: In the first place, the rightness of one’s assertions has nothing to do with winning or losing. If you think you are right, regardless of what other people’s opinions might be, the matter should be closed then and there. However, many people will rush into a power struggle, and try to make others submit to them. And that is why they think of ‘admitting a mistake’ as ‘admitting defeat’. YOUTH: Yes, there definitely is that aspect. PHILOSOPHER: Because of one’s mindset of not wanting to lose, one is unable to admit one’s mistake, the result being that one ends up choosing the wrong path. Admitting mistakes, conveying words of apology, and stepping down from power struggles—none of these things is defeat. The pursuit of superiority is not something that is carried out through competition with other people. YOUTH: So, when you’re hung up on winning and losing, you lose the ability to make the right choices? 

PHILOSOPHER: Yes. It clouds your judgement, and all you can see is imminent victory or defeat. Then you turn down the wrong path. It’s only when we take away the lenses of competition and winning and losing that we can begin to correct and change ourselves.